Deus Ex Machina: A Tale of the Heart
by Simon Aridan
Summary: The imaginary tale of one man caught in the whirlwind of history, and the pivotal role he plays in mankind's darkest hour.
1. Prolouge

I do not own the license to the video game Deus Ex, nor any material conceived by it's parent company.

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**Deus Ex Machina**

A Tale of the Heart

Prologue

The past is fixed- unchangeable. Every single moment of the human life is filled with limitless amounts of choices and the consequences of said choices. Those results then become recordings of the past. Every single result has a dramatic impact. Some effect the entire future of humanity. Some results, the future of just a select few.

What all humans must remember, is that the very existence of such choices is determined by previous decisions made in other dire circumstances. What would have befallen us, if say, the founders of the United States of America never stepped up to the plate and created the Land of the Free? What if the Army of the Potomac had routed at the battle of Gettysburg? What if the American Navy had been dealt a deathblow at the battle of Midway?

Such questions, however, are vanity and chasing after wind.

All events are interwoven together in such a perfect fashion which cannot possibly be the result of chance. A man once said that the chances of the universe shaping itself out to what it is today would be less than the chance of you and a one millimeter target positioned at opposite ends of the known universe, you firing a pistol at the target and hitting it bulls-eye.

This proceeding tale is one that parallels it's historical ancestors, yet this is a story that has not happened, and mercifully, will never take place. It is a story that shows how in times of crisis, men pull out the most extraordinary qualities and triumph in the face of overwhelming odds, defying the laws of all human thinking. It is a story which studies what happens when morals and ethics intertwine themselves with technology and the corruption of the human heart, and who ultimately determines the absolute moral foundation both here and in eternity.

Above all, however, it is a tale of one man's journey through some of the darkest circumstances a human mind could ever imagine. A tale that tells of how evil is an innate trait in the human heart, just how far it can take a person away from what he was made to do, and just how easy it is to turn back, yet how so many people refuse to. A tale that shows the test of a man struggling to walk by faith and not by sight.

I wish you all an enjoyable and mind-prompting experience.

And remember... History is His story.

_Once to every man and nation_

_comes the moment to decide _

_In the strife of truth with falsehood,_

_for the side of good or evil,_

_With each choice God speaking to us,_

_offers each the bloom or blight_

_Then the man or nation chooses_

_for the darkness or the light._

_-James Russell Lowe_


	2. A City On A Hill

"_How swiftly Caesar had surmounted the icy Alps and in his mind conceived immense upheavals, coming war. When he reached the water of the little Rubicon, clearly through the murky night appeared a mighty image of his country in distress. Grief in her face, her white hair streaming from her tower crowned head. With tresses torn and shoulders bare, she stood before him and sighing said, 'Where further do you march? Where do you take my standards, warriors? If lawfully you come, if as citizens, this far only is allowed.'_

_Then trembling struck the leader's limbs, his hair grew stiff and weakness checked his progress, holding his feet at the river's edge. At last he speaks._

'_Oh, thunderer... surveying great Rome's walls from the Tarpeian rock. Oh, Phrygian, house gods of lulus, clan and mysteries of Quirinus who was carried off to heaven. Oh Jupiter of Latium, seated in lofty Alba and hearths of Vesta. Oh Rome, equal to the highest deity, favor my plans! Not with impious weapons do I pursue you! Hear am I, Caesar, conqueror of land and sea, your own soldier everywhere- now too if I am permitted. The man who makes me your enemy, it is he who be the guilty one.'_

_Then he broke the barriers of war and through the swollen river swiftly took his standards. When Caesar crossed the flood and reached the opposite bank; from Hesperia's forbidden fields, he took his stand and said: _

'_Here, I abandoned peace and desecrated law! Fortune, it is you I follow! Farewell to treaties! From now on, war is our judge!'_

_Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!"_

_-Chronicle of Marcus Lucanus_

**The Beginning - A City On A Hill**

"Yes, of course. Your appointment to the directorship of FEMA is all but finalized. The senator was quite clear that there would be no complications whatsoever. He was agreeable on everything... so agreeable in fact that it was as if..."

"As if a servant was groveling at your feet for mercy?"

The two men sat on opposite leather couches in an office overlooking the ground floor of the immense lobby of the even more immense complex. The office was more like a lounge in it's effect. There was no furniture save for the two couches and a small coffee table on which was a telephone. The rug was intricately designed. It must have been constructed in India, or some other eastern country in which people were perfectly content to sit still in a hut and weave all day long. The window was to the left of the entrance, where the wall had been taken out and replaced with a sheet of glass. It served it's purpose well, allowing those in the office a clear view of everything happening beneath on the floor, but offering no view of the office to those on the floor. Protruding from the floor was a great statue of an outstretched hand holding in it's palm the entirety of the globe.

"Servant, eh? Heh, I like the sound of that."

As for the men themselves, one was rather tall, dressed in a white coat, with a light brown hairline which was clearly falling back from his forehead. His back was to the window. He seemed relaxed, at ease, as a man in authority yet without a care in the world. He intimidating set of red, beady eyes were busy meticulously scanning his fingers.

"So I take it he has been put on the priority list?"

The other was shorter, a little more hair, jet black for him. His coat was black, with a demeanor of calm, calculating coolness.

"Ah, I'll get to it eventually," the man in white said tiredly, picking a speck of dirt from his fingernail.

"What about this?" The other man said, slapping down a particularly horrific photograph on the coffee table in open sight of the man in white. Looking down, "Well, what about it, my friend?" he asked calmly.

"I mean the rioting. It's... intensifying to the point where it might not be able to be contained, even with all possible countermeasures being employed."

The man in white raised an eyebrow, slowly looked away from the photograph and shrugged. With a sigh he said, "I'm not sure why we're even containing it in the first place. I mean, why bother spending millions to hold back the chaos? Let it overflow the schools, the churches! Let the mangled, rotten bodies pile up everywhere! Heh, in the end, they're only option will be to beg us to rescue them." This was followed by a small, sly grin.

"There's also reports of armed attacks on shipments. There's not enough to go around, and the lower class is starting to get quite..." The man in black searched for the word, "desperate." It was said with a curious, almost scientific tone. The response was uttered in a completely different manner.

This was quite jubilant news. He laughed with a hearty tone and mocking demeanor. Sitting up and smiling wickedly at his friend, "Haha! Well, of course! Of course they'd start to get desperate! I mean, everyone gets desperate when they can just smell their inevitable doom! It's of no concern, my friend," he said in reassurance. "Their screams will only serve as a warning to the rest of those who are foolish enough to even think about staging insurrection!"

The other man reached over to the table and yanked the photograph back. Slipping it back into his pocket, he sighed. "Hmm.. I do sincerely hope that you're not underestimating this situation. Some... others... may not go as quietly as you believe. Intelligence has received indication that they may be behind the rebellion in Paris."

"Hphm," the man in white sneered at the very suggestion. "Simply a band of pretentious old dreamers playing an imaginary game of running the world." He sat back again, this time resting his feet on the coffee table and laying his head back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling and cracking a smile.

_But the world left those fools behind long ago..._

The other man continued the discussion after a momentary pause. "We have other entanglements as well." The man in white cut off his next sentence. "Let me guess... UNATCO."

"Indeed. Formed on executive orders after the terrorist strike on the statue. Not too much of a issue there, though. I have someone in place. What I'm more concerned about is Savage. He's moved his whole camp up to Vandenberg." While these words were being spoken, the man in white sat up.

Hand on his forehead and rubbing his eyes, "Oh, stop, will you please?" he exclaimed almost annoyingly, shaking his head. "There's no threat there whatsoever. Our biochemical corpus is so far in advance of their's..." The man in black began to speak, but decided against it. "... as is our electronic sentience. Their..." It was now his turn to search for words. "Ethical stiffness, my friend, has allowed us to make lighting-fast progress in areas of research that they wouldn't touch with a meter-stick."

"Are you implying about the augmentation project?" The other asked curiously, though he already knew the answer.

"...Among other things."

As he said this, the man in white stood up and strolled over to the window. The other man waited patiently, going over the conversation in his head, making sure nothing was left out.

"I must say... I'm somewhat disappointed in the performance of the primary unit." It was the man in white, not shifting his gaze from the floor below.

It was the other man who now had reason to smile, having a different viewpoint on things. "Now that is a topic of no concern. The secondary unit will be online soon. It's now in the preparation stage and will be available for operation within the next six months. I will continue to receive reports on it's progress. Don't worry. If necessary, the primary can be eliminated swiftly and without difficulty."

Without a shift in expression, head still facing in the direction of the floor below yet thoughts somewhere else, the man in white said with grim certainty, "We've had to endure much... you and I."

The other straightened up, wiped the smile off his face.

"Yet soon, there will be an order again... a new age. You are aware of my affinity of the writings of Thomas Aquinas?"

The man in black didn't even have to speak, for the other already knew that he was indeed aware.

"He spoke of the mythical City on the Hill and soon... very soon, we will be crowned it's kings."

Raising his head slowly to the heavens and outstretching his arms, he exclaimed,

"No! Better, more important, more perfect than kings- gods!"

_And so the story begins..._


	3. Young Agent Kingsbury

"_Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,"_

_-Ephesians 1:4-5_

**Chapter One**

**Young Agent Kingsbury**

_So this is how it feels..._

At the window of office 21b on the seventeenth floor of some unremarkable white concrete structure on the outskirts of Washington, Simon Kingsbury had just been given two rewards. Well, maybe they could be called allowances.

The first was his own personal office. _Great,_ he thought._ Now instead of pushing papers across other people's desks, I can push papers across _my_ desk._

Aside from the fine polished wood desk, the office had all the traditional accessories. There was an intricate globe on the right side of the desk top. Then there was leather chair, the metal chairs for any guests that might pop in, _Heh, yea... good luck with that,_ the file cabinet to the left of the desk, adjacent to the window, and the bookcase, in the corner, next to the edge of the window on the other side of the room. They were all there. The window extended around the corner of the office, and in that corner, someone had thought it cute to put a house plant right on the windowsill. _Another thing I have to take care of. _The office was painted the same bland color as the building, a solid white. It seemed like an unusually immense improvement from his own little cubical down the hall... but really, who ever knew what the suits in Langley were thinking? Maybe they just wanted to get on his dad's good side. Or maybe it was his dad who orchestrated this.

Simon's father had worked for thirty years. It all paid off when he was appointed the Deputy Director of Intelligence when his son was finishing high school. It certainly paid off for Simon when his dad got him a job as an agent. _High school... _Simon thought. _Right out of high school... heh. Someone must've really been desperate. _All that was only ten months ago. Ten months, and he already had a field assignment filed under 'Command'. The fact that he pestered the higher-ups almost every other day about finding him an "important assignment" certainly didn't hurt. An assignment where his hands didn't get dirty wasn't his definition of an _important_ assignment, however. Oh well, he couldn't change anything now. If he was ordered to go fight boredom in El Salvador, he had to go and fight boredom in El Salvador.

The situation in El Salvador was typical, if you could call it that. God knows that Simon called it that. Some lunatic apparently called on a few favors, and assembled a force large enough to take over a strip of land the size of Massachusetts. Simon had been given the relatively simple task of swatting a noisy fly. _Oh well, the trip might not be all bad. The food's decent, and for sure I need to get out of this city for a while. I wonder what I should bring with me... nothing too conspicuous. I don't want a bullet in my jaw the second I get off the plane_.

As Simon stood there, looking out the window, his thinking was interrupted by a knock on the door. Before Simon even reached the doorknob, the wooden portal swung open. In stepped Dan Winfield, a veteran agent who had helped train the young one whose office this now was. Without uttering a word, Winfield quickly strolled over to the desk and planted a thick stack of papers on it. All color drained from Simon's face. "Is it official procedure for an agent of higher rank to barge into lesser agent's offices without even the courtesy of a lame excuse?" Simon inquired sarcastically. "Oh... I don't know if it's official procedure, but it's _my_ procedure." Dan laughed a hearty laugh and turned to leave. Before the door closed, however, he turned around to add, "I almost forgot, Simon. Miller wants to see you. He says it's urgent."

_What does the old man want now?_

"Alright. Thanks Dan, I'll be there presently. Any idea why he wants to see me?" Winfield chuckled. "Heh, no." Simon gave a quick wave and the other agent departed. The young man took a moment to skim over the first few documents on his desk. Nothing interesting, and that was no surprise. _A requisition for twenty cases of paper clips?_ Simon breathed a heavy sigh and, maybe partly in an attempt to avoid the burdensome paperwork, set off on his trek to Mr. Miller's office.

Simon proceeded down the hallways of the CIA office. In only twenty seconds, he was walking past his former cubicle, which was now being used by some red-haired college kid he had never seen before. The large bowls which contained chips, pretzels, and candies were still being supervised by Sara, his now former neighbor, who worked in the adjacent cubicle. He was tempted to take a piece of chocolate. They were free, after all. He decided against it. He had eaten too much of that stuff recently. After giving a quick wave to both of them, Simon turned the corner and looked out the window to his right. The entire wall was the window, actually. The view was nice, peaceful, unlike the rest of the country. It was nothing, however, that Simon had not seen before, nothing to get excited over. The green grassy plain which became a beach and then eventually continued on into the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean- it had become all too familiar.

He walked slowly down the hall, not too excited about seeing his boss, the bushy mustached Miller, but it was better than filling out a requisition for twenty cases of paper clips. He made a sharp left turn about halfway down the corridor. Now there were no windows to look out of. This place was bad enough _with_ the windows. Simon walked past the coffee machine without stopping, even though he could have used a cup right about now.

When Simon had finally arrived at his intended destination, he had to wait just a little bit longer. Apparently, Miller was just wrapping up a meeting with someone, according to the secretary, Helen Miller, who, just in case you were wondering, had no relation to her boss. The wait wasn't that long, but who came out of Miller's office gave Simon a chill and made him wish the wait was just a little bit longer. The man wore a pure black leather coat which came down to his knees. The large bulge under that coat meant that, obviously, this guy was packing, and not some small machine pistol either. That had to be a military grade heavy weapon, whatever it was. Simon tore his gaze away from that, didn't want to show his suspicion. Looking at the man's blue wire-like veins protruding from his temples revealed that he was one of the few people on this planet who was nano-augmented. The man's relatively short height of around five feet, nine inches only added to his ominous aura.

Miller walked out of his office behind the mysterious visitor. He seemed to open his mouth to say something, but ceased as the augmented man looked at Simon, pointed and asked, "Is this Agent Kingsbury?" The question was directed to no one in particular. Miller wasn't talking, so Simon responded. "Yes sir, indeed I am... I apologize if I didn't catch your name." Simon stood up slowly while saying this. Without a change in expression, the man extended his hand to Simon. The agent shook it, having a jolt of cold shoot up his arm. "FEMA director, Walton Simons. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kingsbury." Simon, somewhat confused, kept a straight face while releasing the man's hand. "Ah, Mr. Simons. I've heard a lot about you. Congratulations on your appointment." Again, without a change in indifferent expression, the response came, "And congratulations on yours as well. I hope you perform well on your first field assignment. Good luck out there on Liberty Island." Simon could not hold back a raised eyebrow directed at Miller, and the visitor could not help but notice it. "Oh yes, forgive me. Mr. Miller was just going to tell you of your change in assignment. He'll fill you in. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have pressing business to tend to. Good day." With that, Simons walked quickly out of the office, shutting the door loudly behind him. _How the hell does the FEMA director know a CIA agent's assignment?_ Kingsbury decided to shove the suspicions away. It would be better not to think too hard about that.

Miller motioned Simon into his office. Simon looked back at Helen for a moment and saw her giving him a look that said "good luck". The agent promptly took a seat once in the office. Miller walked over to the file cabinet, and within a few seconds produced a folder and dropped it on Kingsbury's lap. "As you heard the man say, you're heading to Liberty Isle." Simon was about to inquire as to the reason of the shift in assignment, but he _really_ didn't want to go to El Salvador. He quickly glanced at the material within the folder. _Northwest Successionist Forces take control of the statue and surrounding area. _Miller took his seat. "UNATCO has already established a perimeter. The NSF isn't getting out anytime soon. You'll find all of that info in the folder. UNATCO can probably take care of it, but we want someone over there just in case everything goes to hell." Simon only had one question. "Why me?" Miller lit up a cigar which he had retrieved from the desk drawer and offered one to Simon, who declined. "First of all, you grew up there. You know the geography of New York better than anybody else. You know how things work over there."

Miller took a puff of the cigar.

"Most importantly, however, is that the higher-ups requested you handle this assignment. Don't ask me who. Langley doesn't tell me everything. Now get outta here, kid. Your plane leaves from Dullas airport in three hours." Simon's excitement grew by the second. "Well... uh, what do I do with that enormous pile of paperwork sitting on my desk?" After another puff, "Hand em' off to Winfield. I know he's busy, but this is top priority." Simon rose and opened the door. "Aye, aye sir." After giving a quick two-finger salute, he then walked out, after closing the door, of course. Helen, the secretary, couldn't help but notice that Simon was a lot happier than he was when he walked in. "Good news, Simon?" The response was given with an ear-to-ear smile, "Exceptional news!"

Simon kept his joy contained as he traveled to his friend's office. Simon, doing the same thing Dan had done earlier, simply opened the door and walked to the desk where the agent was sitting. "Danny! Uh, could you do me a favor?" Simon proposed the question, even though there could be only one answer. "Miller wants me to hand this paperwork off to you..." he said with a little smirk. Dan returned the gesture, albeit a sarcastic one. "Yea, I know. Helen called me. Thanks, golden boy." He said with a chuckle as he took the stack of papers and planted them on the side.

As Simon began to walk out, Dan told him in a most uncharacteristically serious tone, with an even more uncharacteristic expression of worry, "Hey, wherever you're going, watch your back, will ya?" Simon nodded in an equally serious manner and left.

When he got about halfway to his office, Simon couldn't help himself as he yelled out "Alright! Awesome!" he pumped his fist in the air a few times before he noticed the entire corridor staring at him. Some with puzzled faces, some with smiling faces. Simon regained his composure as quickly as he could and returned to his office to prepare for his impromptu trip to Liberty Island.

_Now _this _is my idea of an important assignment!_


End file.
